


Birds of Red Feathers

by Acxa_Kogane



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: AU, Angst and Feels, Anti-Hero Tim Drake, Anti-hero AU, Canon Divergence, Damian Wayne Needs a Hug, Duke Thomas is a Good Brother, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd is a good brother, Lazarus Pit, Lazarus Pit Headcanons, Mystery, They all need hugs, actual detective work done by a bat for once
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27998763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acxa_Kogane/pseuds/Acxa_Kogane
Summary: Timothy Drake is dead. All the world knows this. How do they know?  Because an ashen Bruce Wayne delivered the news to the world the morning after, the rest of his living family huddled in mourning behind him.Timothy Drake is alive. Jason Todd knows this. How does he know? Because he can see ghosts and Timmy's is suspiciously missing.
Relationships: Duke Thomas & Jason Todd, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Talia al Ghul & Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Ra's al Ghul - background
Comments: 165
Kudos: 369





	1. Body

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Rise of Cardinal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24490672) by [JustThatOneGirl1815](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustThatOneGirl1815/pseuds/JustThatOneGirl1815). 



> This fic is inspired by Rise of Cardinal by JustThatOneGirl1815, which is an amazing fic and I loved it so much that I wrote this. 
> 
> I will be referring to events that have happened in her fic, and at times I will parallel hers exactly, so I would recommend reading hers at the very least when this starts paralleling. I will make a beginning note indicating which chapter of hers is being referenced when my chapters start lining up. Once the timelines are synced they will stay together for a bit before eventually diverging again due to the differences between worlds. Consider this an AU of the Rise of Cardinal timeline (and OneGirl1815's two-shot Broken, the inspiration and basis for the first few chapters).
> 
> Note: I don't use profanity, and the same goes for my writing, but due to the nature of this fic, there will be some swearing. Those will be bleeped out with "____"

Timothy Drake Wayne was dead. All the world knew. Suicide in his own room at Wayne Manor. Buried next to his adoptive grandparents, beside the older brother he’d never gotten to meet. Tragedy had hit the Wayne household again, the news boldly printing about the poor Prince of Gotham’s misfortune at losing yet another son. 

Vicki Vale painted a story about a depressed, lonely, abused boy who was abandoned and ignored by his famous family. She told the tale of a boy who’d grown so cold and tired of life and so separate from his family, that he’d killed himself. It wasn’t uncommon to hear of an ultra-rich celebrity committing suicide. 

Lois Lane painted a kinder story of a sweet boy who’d drawn into himself and struggled with serious depression and dissociation. She told the tragedy of a boy who kept his secrets close to his heart, not wanting to burden those he loved with his own problems, until he couldn’t bear it anymore. It wasn’t uncommon for such a heroic, kind soul to finally break under all the pressure taken on in order to help others. 

Nobody knew which report was right, just gobbled them both up with that same ravenous fever that spread like wildfire when celebrities were involved. Was he a broken boy? Torn apart by his mind or his family? Was it truly sucide or was he threatened? Did someone kill him and frame it as suicide? How does a young boy with riches and fame and a glowing future end up dead in his bedroom? 

Nobody ever questioned if he was dead. 

Because Tim Drake was dead. And all the world knew it. 

* * *

Tim Drake was not dead. Jason knew this as a fact. _Timothy Drake is alive._

Dick’s voice cracked through the tinny speakers of his cheap computer, appearing on screen next to Babs. “It’s- it’s not a trick, Jay. We-” he choked, tears streaking down his already wet cheeks, “we found his body. In his room.” Barbara’s hand squeezed his and the two of them looked absolutely torn up about it.

They were good actors, weren’t they. Jason could almost believe them. 

“Right. Okay. So he’s 'dead.'” His disbelief ran clear through his tone. “Got it.” 

Dick’s face crumpled even more, looking even more in pain than before. “No, Jay. You don’t understand,” he whispered, “Tim killed himself.” 

He nodded. It was a code. Something was wrong with Tim, he’d gotten himself into deep trouble so they were broadcasting he’d died. Maybe some run in with a rogue and he’d been terribly deformed and there wasn’t a good way to explain to the public how Timothy Drake-Wayne had lost an arm and been splashed with acid overnight when he’d been on tv the day before with that sickly fake smile of his. 

_Tim Drake is alive._

Babs looked sick, something warping her usually calm features into something foreign. A bit of worry started to settle in his stomach. Something was seriously wrong with Tim. He wasn’t dead, obviously, but maybe this was a bit more serious than he’d thought. He frowned. 

“Alright. I’m coming over.” 

Dick opened his mouth to say something, but Jason ended the video call with a single keystroke before he got the chance. He didn’t need to see his overdramatic tears any longer. 

The black computer screen stared back at him for a moment as he slumped back onto the couch. When he'd gotten the call from Babs and she'd told him Tim was dead, his heart had stopped. She'd continued to say she'd tried to get in touch sooner, but they'd found his body yesterday. That's when he'd relaxed. If Tim had died, he would've known... well, almost immediately, if he was as close to Tim as he thought. He'd been annoyed at her for scaring him so badly - though he wasn't about to tell her his heart still hadn't restarted - pesky thing. Then Dick had shoved his way into the call to try and tell him that his baby brother was actually dead. That he'd killed himself.

He snorted. Suicide. Yeah right. Maybe a couple months ago, when Tim was extremely unstable, but he'd gotten better. Jay'd been there. If his kid brother wasn't as stable as he knew he was, Jay wouldn't have gone halfway across the world with his team on a mission that promised to take a few months at least. 

Still... something could have happened. He'd already been gone for... oh, about two months. That would have been plenty of time for someone to break him down if it was a continued attack. 

_And suicide ghosts don't appear till they're as good as forgotten by the living..._

He scowled at the little voice in his head and stood up, making his way to the door. "Shut up. It's not like you've got anything helpful to say."

_Was he really as stable as you thought? Dick sure did seem upset._

"I would have known if he'd died, and you know it. Suicide or not."

The voice didn't respond.

He opened the door and squinted as a blast of sunlight hit him quite unkindly in his face. Blinking a few times to clear the spots from his eyes, he made his way over to where his teammates were repairing the most recent damage to Kori's ship. 

Roy looked up as he got closer and his happy smile faded a bit at the look on his face. "Dude, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost," he teased, trying to lighten the mood.

Jason sighed. "Unfortunately - or fortunately - no. Babs just called."

Kori floated down from where she'd been welding something together and frowned. "What did she want?"

"Nothing, she just..." he ran a hand through his hair, "...wanted to tell me that apparently Tim's dead?"

Silence.

"Uh... but like. Wouldn't you have known or something?" 

He sighed. "Yeah, that's what I thought as well. But... she didn't look good. Said it was suicide, but... I really think I would have known anyway. I'm gonna head over there just in case. I mean, knowing Tim, he's probably just gotten himself into a heap of trouble and he's not gonna be doing hero work for a while, and definitely not anything public."

Roy nodded, and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. "Don't worry about it dude. We've got it covered here. Go see your bro and make sure he knows he needs to at least send a text before offing himself." The redhead's smile was poorly hiding his concern.

"Thanks Roy."

Kori's frown deepened. "Jason, are you certain that you wish to go alone? Tomorrow is the twenty-seventh of April."

Oh. Right. His death day. Usually unhelpfully commemorated by some... less than pleasant occurrences. Oh the joys of imperfect resurrection. 

He brushed off her concerned look. "I'll be fine, Kors. I've handled it before. I'll give you guys a call if it gets bad." Something in his gut was churning the longer he wasn't on his way. He needed to get back. _Now._ "Actually, do you think she's repaired enough to make a quick flight over to Gotham?" 

Roy looked over the still not quite finished ship. "I mean, she should be fine as long as we don't need the heat shields functioning."

"Great. Let's go." He briskly walked up the ramp and started up the systems, not waiting for the others to follow him in. This was too important.

_Tim Drake is alive._

_He **is.**_

* * *

Three hours later he was in Gotham, speeding down congested streets in his motorcycle and absolutely certain that Tim wasn't dead. 

Gotham reeked of death and swarmed of ghosts and other such things, but despite all the chaos, Jason knew that Tim wasn't among them. He'd been trying to mentally summon his ghost for a while just in case and hadn't received anything to indicate his calls weren't just echoing off into oblivion. So yeah, Tim wasn't dead. And he wasn't close to dead either. Ergo, he was alive.

Now, whether the bats _thought_ he was dead was another matter entirely. Tim was a genius and 100% capable of faking his death in a hundred realistic ways that Bruce would fall for. So if he wanted to fake his death convincingly, Jason was absolutely certain he could do so. Probably wouldn't even need more than twenty minutes to come up with a foolproof plan that would convince everyone he was dead. 

Well. Almost everyone. 

The Cave was two minutes away. He skidded around a corner, wet gravel spraying out from under his tires. He almost lost control, but caught himself and roared down the quiet road. It had gotten dark, the world turning to gray around him. Thunder rumbled lowly in the distance. Ominous, like it knew something he didn't.

Soon he'd be in the cave and they'd tell him what was _really_ going on. Whether Tim was injured, or tricking them.

Of course, if he's tricking them, he'd need to act like he was also getting tricked. At least until he could get to Tim and demand what does he think he's doing, giving him a heart attack like that. At which point the idiot would probably apologize in a offhanded way, too caught up in whatever he was scheming to really pay attention, busy clicking away at his keyboard like a little evil mastermind. And then Jason would forgive him and come lean over his shoulder to see what he'd gotten up to now and why it was so important that everyone else thought he was dead. 

Everyone else.

Tim had probably just forgotten to let him know what he was doing. Or didn't want to bother him from his mission. Something like that.

'Cause Tim Drake is _alive_.

The gaping mouth of the cave entrance opened before him, little blue track lights guiding him through the dark tunnel. 

He was about ten seconds away from the tunnel exit when he felt it. It was so abrupt and certain that he almost crashed.

_Someone in there is dead._

The bright lights of the Batcave met him. Dismounting, he stared at his motorcycle for a stilted heartbeat, not wanting to turn and face the scene behind him. Little drops of rain glinted in the light, teardrops fallen on the smooth red paint. The hiss of release as he pulled his hood off was the only sound in the room, save for the constant squeak of bats far above. 

Someone shifted. He dropped his helmet on the seat, a dull thunk matching the one in his chest. 

_There's a body behind him._

His breath shuddered in his chest. He swallowed hard. He could handle this.

It wasn't Tim. 

_Tim is_ ** _alive._**

.... _right?_

Jaw tense, he turned on his heel, scanning the room for who else was there. _Bruce, Dick, Duke, Babs, Steph, Damian- Alfred._

His heart stopped for the second time in the last few hours.

 _Alfred was crying._

"What." His voice was tight, angry. "Is going on." 

There was a tense silence. 

Barbara was the one to answer, her usual calm thrown off ever so slightly. "Jason," her tone was softer than he'd heard from her in a long while, "I wasn't lying earlier."

"I don't **care** what you said earlier." He snapped, refusing to look at or get closer to the body on the table off to the side. "Tell me **now**. **What is going on.** "

Damian snapped back at him, his voice filled with bitterness and, worst of all, grief. "Didn't you hear her, Todd. She told you Timothy is dead."

A dangerous growl was creeping into his voice, the fiery anger beginning to pulse alongside the icy fear in his veins. "And I said to stop lying."

 **"I'm** **not lying."** Damian bellowed, fists clenched tight.

Jason flinched, and then pretended he hadn't, staring at the furious boy in shock.

Dami's emerald eyes met his, pain so clear in them he almost choked. Then the fury seemed to drain out of them, fists loosening as he sank back into his chair. 

"... _I'm not,"_ he whispered, small shoulders shaking quietly.

It was all too much. The tears, the yelling, the _body._ It felt like a vice around his lungs, tightening, crushing, suffocating. Like rubble crunching into his broken ribs, like the inside of his coffin. 

He shuddered, banishing the flashbacks from his mind, trying to keep them at bay. It wouldn't be for long, he could feel it ticking down, like a bomb too far out of reach, but close enough to bring everything around him crashing down. 

No. No, this wasn't the time. Now he was focused on figuring out what the heck was going on with Tim. Why there was a body in the cave, why everyone was saying he was dead, why there wasn't a ghost if he was-

Swallowing, he looked at Duke, who shrank back under his gaze, clearly not expecting to be spoken to. Good. He was the only one here who had some level of emotional maturity, enough shock not to fully have processed despite being familiar with suicide, and who wouldn't lie to him. 

Apparently Duke didn't understand his silent look, just shifting uncomfortably in that half second. He didn't have time for that. "Duke."

The younger man jumped a bit.

Jason didn't give him time to respond. "Hi. What happened."

"Oh, uhm." Duke swallowed hard. "Yesterday, Dick went in to go get Tim and ask him if he wanted to go out to the theater. Tim was in his bedroom, and wasn't answering the door. Dick thought he was asleep, or maybe just not in his room, so he went in. And.. he saw Tim on the floor over by the window." His voice started to get choked up. "And there was a gun in his hand and a- a note on the desk. Dick said it had probably happened a few hours before he came. They were all out for an event. He- he shot- The bullet-"

Babs cut in, "It went through his forehead. Same caliber as the gun, already checked for any other DNA, at the same angle as his hand would have held it. The fingerprint pattern on the gun matched the same way he was likely holding it. The only sign of pressure was at the top of his palm and the trigger finger. He wasn't distressed or angry, also not likely to have been forced. He didn't close his eyes. We think he was watching the hummingbird feeder outside the window."

His heart wasn't beating. He was vaguely aware he wasn't breathing, but that was a problem for another time. His eyes slowly turned from Duke to Bruce, sitting at the computer, where a single positive DNA test twisted slowly on screen. 

"Bruce?" He rasped.

Bruce didn't look at him, his shoulders sinking deeper. His head was dropped into his hands, fingers tangled in his messy hair. He wasn't even in his armor. No cowl, just the same business suit he'd likely worn to work yesterday.

Dick looked up from where he'd been standing next to B. "Just go look, Jay." He sounded tired. Exhausted and drained, but still raw inside.

The empty feeling of the body behind him suddenly seemed to force itself to the forefront of his mind. Throbbing there. Waiting for him to acknowledge it.

He didn't want to look. He didn't want to see... whatever was on that table that had them all so convinced Tim was dead. 

So he didn't. 

He was walking back to his motorcycle before he realized he'd moved. Shoving his helmet back on his head on autopilot and kicking off, the engine revving beneath him, a powerful white noise to the tumultuous thoughts in his head. 

_Tim Drake isn't dead._

_He **isn't.**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to read about some of what Jason goes through on his death day, as I'm not sure if I'll focus a lot on it in the next chapter, you're welcome to go cry your eyes out over my one-shot And the Waterfall Thunders On
> 
> Many thanks to OneGirl for letting me write this! I hope you enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed RoC!


	2. Cursed

There was a blank spot in his memory. A gap between leaving the cave in a blur of emotion and ending up here, in the corner of an old dim safehouse. 

Jason shifted his arm - already stinging with the phantom pain of a crowbar's kiss - to look at his watch. The two little hands on the watch face shone up at him with a friendly glow-in-the-dark blue. He'd always liked that color. 

1:37 AM

He stared at the watch for a long moment, something so fascinatingly simplistic in the two little lines drawing a point to the present moment, the current drop in a ocean of time. Those lines weren't marred by the confusion of opposing opinions, they weren't muddled with facts that appeared to contradict each other, there was no great mystery captured in the little gears behind the glass. And yet it could harness time, regulate such an unfathomable force to little bite-sized chunks that pass in a heartbeat. 

Tim gave him that watch almost a year ago exactly. After his digital watch had caused a violent flashback to the analog timer on Joker's bomb. He'd worn it ever since.

Sighing, he dropped his head back. It hit the wall with a quiet thud. He stared at the dark ceiling. 

Tim must be really serious about whatever it is he's doing to fake his death now. 

Something in his stomach churned. If this really was Tim faking his death, he hadn't told Jay about it. And he chose to do it now, when he knew he would be-

Fire burst through his lungs.

Coughing violently, he curled in on himself, tears starting to form in his eyes.

_Great. This'll be fun._

Reflexively, he gasped. Air flooded down his throat, but instead of bringing relief, it brought the sense of drowning. 

If one could drown in acid. 

He choked, eyes flashing green-

_It was everywhere. Glowing, burning, wretched green. It dug into him with wicked claws. They ripped endlessly into his skin, his cells forcibly sewn back together by the same poisonous acid that tore them apart. It was venom in his lungs, his veins, his heart, corrupting everything it touched. It was crushing his mind, hysteric laughter twisting in a haunting trap, screams never breaking free-_

He was shaking on the floor. The safe house was blurry. He wasn't breathing, couldn't. 

Laughter echoed in the emptiness of the room. 

_Which hurts more? Forehand or backhand?_

Someone just kill him already.

 _A or B? AH HA HA HA_ **_HA!!!_ **

Someone _else._

_What, aren't you having fun? I know I am. HA HA!_

He groaned with the last bit of air in his lungs. "Shut uuuuppp..." His voice sounded weird in the room, like he was hearing it from far away.

_But the fun's just-_

Ignoring the jokeresque voice rising in his mind, he focused on not allowing himself to breathe in again. The first twenty seconds were the hardest, but necessary. After a few years of attacks like this, times when his body would rebel against life and when his death date was imminent, his flashbacks worsened and he'd discovered it was less painful just to suffocate. 

_Less_ being the operative word there. Cause it _definitely still hurt._

Whoever thought coming back to life was a gift had clearly never endured this. This ain't a _gift_. It's a _curse_.

 _Something slammed into his jaw, cracking the bone._ No, he was fine. _He could feel the pain shooting through his skull._ It was just a hallucination. _The cold metal of the crowbar ripped into his side and he_ gasped. The little bit of oxygen _burned_ in his lungs. A tear tracked lightly down the side of his face. _Focus on that._

_Maybe he should have called Roy and Kori._

After a desperate eternity, the tension in his chest bled out as his confused mind stopped the survival instinct of _breathe._ The sensations of Joker tearing into him remained and his throat burnt from the acrid smoke he wasn't breathing, but at least he was done drowning in air. Silver linings and all that. 

Shifting, he pushed himself up into a seated position. Then, using the wall to balance, he managed to keep his flinching to a minimum and stand up. He eyed the couch a few yards away. It was always nicer to wake up on the couch than on the floor.

 _Not_ taking a deep breath to steady himself, he took a cautious step away from the wall on shaking, unsteady legs. _The crowbar shattered his left femur._ Nope. His legs were intact. 

Keeping his eyes fixed on the couch and his arms out for balance, he stumbled across the vast space. A thought occurred to him and he had to resist the urge to snort. He looked like a zombie. Shambling across the room without breathing and fixed single-mindedly on his target. 

Though most zombies were more interested in brains than couches. 

But hey, what can he say? He was a particularly intelligent zombie who knew a couch was clearly the real prize here. Much fluffier and softer than brains. Also much better to a take a momentary death on. Sleeping was so overrated anyway. 

His fingertips met with the back of the couch and he grinned. Victory. 

The tattered couch made for a good stabilizer as he circled it and finally collapsed into the soft cushions and relaxed. Oh this was so much better. He was face down, but that didn't matter. It wouldn't be like he was breathing anytime soon anyway. 

Hopefully, the bats weren't planning to track him down. B would probably have an aneurysm if two of his "kids" were found dead in their own rooms within forty-eight hours of each other. But maybe then they'd realize something else was going on here, instead of a random, unprompted suicide.

Speaking of _prompted_ suicide, however, now he only needed to wait for his heart to stop to be dead. The finicky thing had apparently restarted during those twenty missing minutes. Fortunately, it was already beating pretty weakly, so he'd only need to wait two or three minutes for it to give up and for the now-familiar darkness to take him again.

Joker's laugh rang louder in his ears.

_Did you think you could hide from me, bird-boy?_

Really, if someone wanted to just forcibly stop his heart now he wouldn't complain.

_HA! Now there's a joke!!_

Not even kidding. He'd probably pay them. 

_The crowbar gouged out a hole in his skull-_

He should probably look into getting some fast acting poison. Or maybe learning how to stop and start his heart.

- _sending fault lines through the thick bone._

It felt like forever until his heartbeat faded away at last and everything else became more and more numb and detached. 

_finally._

Everything was darkness.

* * *

Bruce had collapsed in on himself after Jason had left. He looked more broken than Duke had seen him before.

Barbara and Dick had just watched as the estranged bat roared out of the cave on his bike. 

There was silence.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to hide the tremor in them that had appeared during Jason's fierce demand for an explanation. Hopefully Hood's sudden interest in him wasn't going to be a problem later. Duke didn't even think he and Jason had exchanged more than twelve words in the past. 

Steph started quietly crying again, leaning over to cry into Alfred's chest, the old butler comforting her when nobody else felt stable enough to. 

Damian still sat in his chair, shaking. A tear track was running down his face. The kid pulled his knees up close to him and hid his face.

He swallowed down the shock and confusion of all the recent events and walked over. The poor kid needed a hug but was too proud to ask for one. There was only the one seat, but Damian didn't complain when he pulled him up, sat down, and then pulled him back down onto his lap.

"'M fine." The kid grumbled with no force. "Don't need your stupid hugs," he protested, curling into Duke's chest. 

"Alright, kid." His voice was soft. As if something too loud would shatter the grieving silence that filled the cave. 

Dami sniffed, then turned into the hug more.

Barb pulled up cameras tracking Jason's reckless path through the congested traffic. One or two times it looked almost as if he was going to get in an accident. Between his rash driving and the thundering rain, it wouldn't be a shock if someone hit him.

Something about that seemed almost morbidly humorous. One of them dies from suicide, another died while running away from that truth. 

He shuddered, pulling Damian's small body closer to his. If he didn't know better - or maybe he did - he'd think this family was cursed. He and Tim had once joked that the two of them were the only ones who hadn't died yet. Jason and Damian obviously being the most serious instances, but Dick and Stephanie had both faked their death and even Cass' heart had stopped for a minute or two once. Bruce was notorious for "dying" and Babs had been presumed dead a couple times, though never for very long. Duke himself had never found a need to joke about how he hadn't died yet - common sense just said that was dumb living in a world like theirs. But Tim... Tim had found it amusing. Amusing enough to have brought it up more than once, and with a bit of chilling neutrality to it, as if he wouldn't really mind if he joined the ranks of the dead robins. 

Now he wondered if he should have paid more attention. Maybe sat down with him and asked him seriously how he was doing. Heaven knows this job wasn't easy and it was no surprise that they'd all get PTSD. Tim... was only like twelve or thirteen when he started as Robin, and if the stories he'd heard were true, the kid had been out on the streets long before that. Duke knew very well that you saw a _lot_ of stuff on those streets that would've given a kid Tim's age nightmares without adding in the vigilantes and rogues. And Tim... he glanced over at the table everyone was either avoiding or brooding over. 

Tim had been the most independent of them all. The most certain in his stability. Even Bruce didn't make it a secret that he leaned on Alfred. But Tim seemed like he stood all alone against the world, against the rogues, against the PTSD, and he was fine. He was smart and strong and resilient and impossibly clever. 

The body lay quiet on the table.

Tim had always figured ways out of even the most confusing situations, he'd slipped through the fingers of criminal masterminds like Ra's Al Ghul more times than Duke knew. He'd been almost like a force of nature. Like a bolt of lightning, quick, precise, and absolutely terrifying. You wouldn't think something so sudden and small (in comparison to an earthquake or wildfire) could cause as much damage and wreak as much havoc as he could. Duke was entirely convinced that if Tim had wanted to, he could take over the world and the world would only have mild complaint. He was so cleverly manipulative like that.

The body lay still on the table.

Tim had been the most universally trusted by everyone. People might say that it was Dick who was most loved, that the first Robin was the most charming and won your heart over with a smile, and that was true. But Tim. Quiet, unassuming, friendly, snarky, sarcastic, clever, awkward Tim was the one that people trusted. None of the bats - not even Damian - could argue that Tim was anything but trustworthy. Bruce had trusted him with Wayne Enterprises, with high-security cases and extreme threats, and even with Gotham. Barbara trusted him more, perhaps, than she trusted any of the rest of them. Bruce was too willing to omit information or lie to them and Dick was prone to rash action and emotional responses. Tim was reliable and logical and unfailingly loyal. If you were struggling, Tim would try to help. If you had to choose someone who'd never betray you, you would pick Tim. If you told him a secret, he'd take it to his grave. 

The body lay dead on the table.

And somehow, _somehow_ that wonderful, brilliant, reliable person was dead.

Not just dead. Duke could have handled if he'd died in some great battle, or sacrificed himself to save another.

No. He wasn't just _dead._ He was suicidal. He was dead because he _wanted to be_. And that was what Duke couldn't believe. That someone like Tim, that someone who was as smart and loved and treasured as Tim, would take a gun, put it to his head, and pull the trigger. 

He felt sick. It wasn't like Tim hadn't known what he was doing either. Despite many theories that had been quietly discussed, this wasn't the work of mind control or some weird desire that had possessed him. His whole room had been cleaned, carefully packed away into boxes labeled with Tim's chaotic handwriting that hovered between professionally neat and illegible chicken scratch. The boxes were all stacked up in the corner of his empty room, certain boxes even marked with "For Dick," "For Cass," "For Damian." Sure, you could argue he maybe knew he was going to be forced into killing himself, but the boxes hadn't hidden any other note detailing who was responsible or what was happening. Tim was smart enough to slip things like that past the notice of whoever might have been forcing him to kill himself. Duke had seen him - and all the other bats - do harder while under extremely close supervision. 

But the whole thing had been quiet, organized, and placed _just so._ Planned so they would have an easy time going through what was left.

Maybe Duke hadn't known Tim well enough to know he was as broken as he was. But he did know this. That if Tim was going to kill himself, he wouldn't have wanted his death to bother the others any more than necessary. If he really wanted to die, if he'd really been so horribly suicidal - and was it really that impossible? - Tim wouldn't have wanted his family to spend months and years mourning him until his room turned into the creepily-untouched memorial that Jason's old room was. He wouldn't have wanted them to dance around the topic of his death like they did with Thomas and Martha Wayne's, or make his death more significant than his life. He hadn't left them anything to enshrine, other than his very carefully folded Red Robin costume in his gear locker, and a picture of them as a family taken just a few weeks ago when Cass came to visit resting lightly on top.

It was all so thought through, so detailed, and so undeniably _Tim._

His suicide note even had a sticker.

A sticker of a little robin.

Warm, wet tears stained his hoodie where Damian's face pressed into his chest. Swallowing tightly, he rubbed the crying boy's back. 

_Why did you leave, Tim?_

Barbara closed the video feed after seeing Jason enter an old apartment building. 

Dick was slumped on the floor next to Bruce, his back to the computer and his head in his hands.

Stephanie was quietly hiccuping. Alfred went to get her a glass of water. She went with him, hand fisted in his jacket like a young child, scared to let go.

Bruce leaned on the desk, pressing his palms into his eyes, as if the pressure would stop the tears.

Tim lay silent on the table, a white cloth draped over his face to cover the fatal hole in the center of his head. He stared at that pure white, wishing it would give him answers.

_Why would you want to die?_

The body made no movement. The cloth didn't flutter with a breath. The pale fingers didn't twitch. 

Damian choked on a sob.

_We all loved you, Tim._

_Why did you leave?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	3. Senses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUESS WHAT Y'ALL. YOU GET A BIGGER CHAPTER THAN I ORIGINALLY EXPECTED CAUSE JASON DECIDED YOU ALL GET TO SHARE IN THE ANNOYANCES OF DEATH AND TOTALLY THREW OFF MY NICE CHAPTER PLANNING.
> 
> ALSO I WROTE THIS WHILE SICK SO BE IMPRESSED WITH MY GREATNESS

Jason woke up with a killer headache. It felt like his skull had been replaced with uranium and his brain was undergoing radioactive decay. Just another thing to add to the list of reasons why immortality sucks. Waking up post-mortem was usually more annoying and painful than actually dying. Probably cause now you've gotta _do things now._ Dead people don't need to do anything. Like sleeping people. Waking back up from death was the immortal equivalent of needing to get out of your nice warm bed at an unholy hour of the morning and traverse out into the cold, noisy world and go to work. 

_Ugh._

He rolled his head to one side, internally wincing at the popping in his neck, and forced one eye to crack open. 

The light immediately assaulted his poor oxygen-deprived brain.

_Ugh light. Why must you be so cruel? What have I ever done to deserve this harsh, unjust treatment?_

His arms ached and burned as he tried to push himself up to his elbows, feeling both stiff and fragile. It took more strength than he felt he had to fight against the shaking currently wracking his body. Slowly he peeled open his other eye to glare down at the couch cushion he’d been so nicely dead on just a little bit ago. Curse the living world for being so insistent on keeping him in it. 

Pushing himself a little higher, he forced his sore muscles to pull his legs off the side of the couch in an attempt to sit upright. 

What actually happened was his already minimal vision got weird and blurry and there was a dull thunk he vaguely heard from a mile away and then he was blearily staring up at the ceiling from the floor. 

He barely felt the impact. 

_Ughhhhhh._

You know what, he might just stay here for a bit. Wait for the rigor mortis to set _out_ of him. It wasn't like he could tell the difference between the floor and the couch till his sense of touch was working again. And he didn't have anywhere he urgently needed to go.

Something niggled at the back of his mind. Some thought that his brain was trying to remind him of. 

He tried to concentrate on it for a bit, but it kept slipping out of his metaphorical fingers. Oh well. He'd remember it eventually. Probably once he started breathing again. Whenever that would be. 

So he lay there on the floor and stared at the ceiling. 

It was really quite anticlimactic in terms of returning to life. 

There wasn't any screaming or thrashing about in pain or crying or gasping for air before collapsing into the arms of some imaginary person who cared. Those things did happen when he actually had to _heal_ from being physically killed. (Well, maybe not the collapsing into the arms of the imaginary person. That would require a person, imaginary or not, who actually cared.) But no. Not this time. This was just numbness and muted senses and rigor mortis.

The ceiling was a bit less blurry. He could almost make out the bumpy texture of it. While some people hated popcorn ceilings, he'd always liked them. That was the kind of ceiling the bedroom he'd shared with his mom had. He remembered long hours of staring at it during nights when it was too cold to sleep and they were huddled together trying to stay warm under a tattered blanket. Catherine had made it a game for them to try and find shapes among the bumps. 

His eyes hurt. He couldn't make any shapes out now with the condition his senses were in. 

Tim hated these ceilings. Jason remembered the first time Tim had noticed them in a safehouse of Jay's. It had been after a fight with Killer Croc and Tim had been nursing a broken wrist and a few cracked ribs and was mayyybe on more painkillers than he should have been... 

~

_"Jason, what the actual heck is your ceiling?"_

_"Hm?" He looked up. "What's wrong with it?"_

_Tim's pinched expression was hilarious. "What's **wrong** with it?!! Is there anything **right** about it?!!!"_

_He raised his eyebrows. Tim continued,_

_"Who in their right mind thinks that **cottage** **cheese** is the ideal texture for a ceiling?! It looks like mutilated chewing gum! How is that at all attractive?!"_

_"It's called a popcorn ceiling-"_

_"Popcorn! That is a_ disgrace _to popcornkind." Tim pulled an impressive look of pure disgust. "Why on earth would you even choose a ceiling texture called 'popcorn' in the first place? Why was it invented?! Was the person on drugs?!!"_

_At this point Jason had stopped trying to contain his laughter. It didn't stop Tim's rant._

_"Whoever designed this safehouse should be fired. That atrocity of a ceiling should never be used in interior design."_

_Tim looked so offended it was absolutely **hysterical**. _

_"If someone had the audacity to install that in something of mine, I might have filed a lawsuit simply due to the intense psychic damage I'm taking from needing to look at it."_

_He choked on his laughter. "Replacement-"_

_"What? Are you gonna tell me I'm wrong?" Tim glared challengingly at him. He almost fell off his chair laughing so hard._

_"Nah," he wiped the tears off with his sleeve, "I was just gonna let you know how much of a spoiled rich kid you sound like right now."_

_Tim's mouth dropped into a small 'o', shock exploding across his face. Jason promptly died of laughter._

~

He laughed softly at the memory, pulling a little bit of air into his starving lungs. It burnt like crazy, but also felt sort of minty as it flowed past bloodless lips and slid down his throat. Ever since that night, Tim had never failed to complain about the ceiling whenever he stayed at one of his safehouses that had it. 

_Tim..._ Something clicked faintly in his brain. 

There was something about Tim. And it was important. 

He frowned at the ceiling. Yes. There was something going on with Tim. Something going on before he'd died...

_died._

_WAIT._

Gasping, he tried to sit up in his panic. Instead all his muscles screamed in pain and he collapsed back down on the ground and coughed all that air he'd just inhaled back out. _Ow._

_Tim's dead._

What. No. That wasn't it... it was something close to that. Something... something with someone else...

His brain felt so foggy. He probably needed more oxygen to start thinking more clearly. 

He stared at the ceiling, taking small breaths and trying not to panic until he remembered what it was. 

_Tim is_ **not** _dead. But the bats think that he is._

Okay. Okay. So. He's gotta get off this floor and figure out what happened to Tim and if he's okay and safe and all that. And figure out why he wants all the others to think that he's dead. And why he didn't tell Jay before faking his death. 

Step one, get off the floor and try to get to wherever Tim is likely to be. Or wherever Tim is likely to leave him a clue telling him where he's holed up and pretending to be dead for some insane reason.

Okay so that might be more than just one step. More like five steps most likely. Well, the first one of _those_ was to get off the floor. 

Easier said than done. 

The one good thing about all the pain that comes with moving is that it tells him that his arms are, in fact, _moving_. And that he is pushing against the floor cause his muscles are really unhappy with needing to work that hard to try and get him up from it even if he can't feel the floor at all. Fun medical fact: You lose your sense of touch when you're coming back after being this dead cause no breathing + no heartbeat = no oxygenated blood = nothing to stimulate the nerves. So you get lots of internal pain if you've got lazarus juice stuck in you and no external anything cause all the nerves are shut down. 

A minute of pain and almost falling and a great deal of stubbornness later, he managed to get to an upright position. The room was spinning and he felt close to passing out but that was fine. The important thing was figuring out what to do next. _Probably get to the Nest. That’s the best place to look for Tim or for clues._ If his memory served him correctly, his helmet was on the side table towards the door. But if he wanted to actually get anywhere on a motorcycle in the next three hours, his heart would need to be restarted.

Roughly ten minutes later, he'd managed to stand and stumble his way to the little cabinet of things he lovingly called his med bay. What with the pit handling all his injuries for him, he didn't need much in terms of medical supplies, but among the few things he did have was a small device with four little metal prongs about a centimeter long sticking out one end of it. He scrabbled around until he saw his hand grasp it properly, and turned it over carefully with numb, unnaturally white fingers. 

There was a switch on the side with a little lightning bolt etched on it. He flicked it and then jammed the metal pokey parts into his chest above his heart. Three seconds later he _almost_ screamed and broke his vocal chords as it shocked his heart up with WAY more electricity than should be humane. _Thanks Roy._

But, as painful as it was, the blasted thing did work. And even if his entire body felt like it had been fried, he could hear and feel his stubborn heart jump back into motion. But _man did it **hurt.**_

Ignoring the pain as best as he could, he made his way over towards the table with his helmet. There was a heart shaped mirror hanging there on the wall. He didn't really want to look at his reflection, so traced the purple outline with his eyes instead. Kori had been the one to put it up when the Outlaws had crashed at this safe house for a bit. She had gotten tired of sharing the bathroom with him and Roy for her makeup and put this mirror up instead. 

He sighed and grabbed his helmet before looking up and accidentally meeting his own bloodshot gaze in the reflective surface. 

He looked awful. 

His skin was so white it rivaled the skin tone of some of the ghosts he saw. In fact, if he hadn’t recognized himself, he probably would have thought a ghost had actually gotten stuck in his mirror again. He tilted his head and his reflection mirrored him perfectly, a few matted strands of black and white hair peeling away from where they’d stuck to his forehead, pulled down by gravity.

So not a ghost mimicking him. Though he sure did look like one. 

The blood had drained completely from his lips and cheeks, leaving him so pale he thought he might start seeing his skeleton if he got any whiter. It was a disturbing contrast to the blood red veins popping in the sclera of his eyes. The whole undead appearance was tied off with the glassy look in his eyes, a look he was long familiar with. It was the same look they developed when he was intentionally trying to see into the ghost world or was engaging in other such paranormal activity. He studied them in the mirror for a few moments, watching the bright green slowly twist and tangle with his natural blue under a filmy layer of death.

Breaking his own gaze, he tugged his helmet over his head. Time for answers. 

* * *

Duke was alone in the cave when he got the call. It was from Hood's helmet. The signal tracker said he was in downtown Gotham, moving fairly quickly. Probably on his motorcycle. 

He swallowed hard and opened the line. "Hey Hood. It's Signal."

"Hey."

Duke winced. _Wow, he sounds really bad..._

Jason cleared his throat on the other end of the line. "You said there was a note. Can you send me a copy."

"Oh, uh, yeah. I can-"

"Great. Thanks, kid."

The line cut before he had the chance to say anything else. He worried at his lip a bit. Jason was clearly not doing well with all of this, his voice had been really raw, even worse than Dick's. 

He glanced at the stairway. Everyone else was upstairs, all having retreated to their own rooms to cry and rest. Duke had been planning to follow them, but something about leaving Tim's body down here alone seemed wrong, and his mind was still churning trying to process all that had happened. 

Trying to process that Tim had killed himself and his body was dead on the table. His _body._ _Him._ Trying to process that he would never move or smile or frown or laugh again cause he’d chosen to put a bullet through his head. Just… dead. Forever. (Provided they didn’t try and resurrect him like they’d apparently done with Damian, which Duke still could hardly believe actually happened. That just because they were vigilante detectives with stubbornness issues that meant they could actually bring a person who was _dead_ back to _life._ That just… seemed beyond mortal means.) 

Forcing his fingers to work, he started looking through the batcomputer files for the scan of Tim’s suicide note to send to Jason. 

The note was short. 

_“Dear friends, loved ones, and those somewhere in between,_

_Goodbye.”_

There were crease lines on the scan from where Bruce had crushed the note in his hand after reading it. They’d done their best to flatten it out, but it remained creased and damaged, no longer the pristine, smooth piece of paper it had been before. He felt almost like he should tell Jason “ _No, it wasn’t on a crunched piece of paper. It was perfect before.”_

He hit send anyway. And then felt like it wasn’t fair to Tim for Jason to think he’d written his suicide note on some wrinkled scrap of paper and sent a followup message with the information it had been smooth before. 

Jason probably wouldn’t care, but it made him feel a little better. Like he was respecting Tim’s memory a little more that way. 

He wished he could've done more.

* * *

Jason unlocked the door to the Nest and entered, not bothering to try and hide the fact he was here. 

"Yo, Timbird."

The door latched behind him with a click. 

There was no answer.

He pulled his helmet off, dropping it on the counter and ventured further into Tim's mildly chaotic base. 

"Hey, it actually doesn't look like you invited a tornado over for once. Didja get up to some spring cleanin' or somethin'?" 

The room answered him with silence.

He frowned, making his way to Tim's.. uh, not really official bedroom. Just where he spent most of his time sleeping cause he'd work there when he was tired and things followed their natural course. 

The door was cracked open a bit. He swung it the rest of the way open. "Tim?"

The blankets that were usually all scattered about the room were neatly folded and put on the shelf. Huh. That was new. Maybe Alfred or one of Tim's hero friends had stopped by and Tim just hadn't gotten around to pulling them out for an all-nighter blanket nest yet. (It wouldn't be long before they were in a mess on the floor again, Jason felt sure.) 

Aside from the unnaturally clean room, Jason didn't find anything indicating Tim had been there recently. Which probably meant he wasn't at this base. Duh. Cause he wouldn't stay _here_ if he was trying to make the bats think he was dead. (Which still made no sense by the way. They were like, his _family_ or something. Yeah, _Jason_ would totally fake his death and not let the bats know he was alive, but why would precious Timmybird trick his loving family into mourning him?)

He left that room after checking it for clues, closing the door behind him. The sound of the latch barely met his ears, which were still recovering from his recent death. (Speaking of, if you thought the feeling of pins and needles was painful enough in your leg or foot, try having it all over your entire body. Including your face. And a million times worse cause no circulation at all for hours.)

Looking up at where he knew the closest camera was, he gave it an annoyed look. Tim was probably watching him from there and giggling cause he thought he was just ohhhh so sneaky. Idiot bird. 

Checking Tim's favorite work perch brought him to his first discovery and he grinned widely at the little yellow sticky note on the window, a rush of relief washing over him. 

_Oh thank goodness. He's fine._

He pulled the sticky note off the window and read it with a confused frown. 

"Under the coffee table? What??" 

The coffee table was in the main workspace, beside Tim's favorite couch. The flatscreen was on the other side of the room and the couch had been occupied by the two of them many times in the past. The rips it now bore were simply marks of how much it had been used and loved. Like stretch marks. But on a couch. 

.... he might still be a bit foggy in his brain from lack of oxygen, but nobody needed to know that.

Anyway, the coffee table should hopefully provide him some other clue as to where he was going. 

It did not. 

It provided him with a black metal box, a bit larger than a foot and a half in length and only a few inches tall, with a lock on the side. 

Wonderful. Thanks Tim.

"Am I supposed to pick this or...?"

The air gave him no answer. So picking the lock it was. Even if that was a really terrible idea whenever it came to something of Tim's. In fact, messing with mysterious metal boxes left by Tim was a terrible idea. But considering that something being a terrible idea had literally never stopped him before, it was a bit ridiculous to think it would now. He got out his lock picks.

Thirty seconds later, the box clicked open smoothly. There was no explosion of sticky pink glitter or mysterious blue smoke or even a silent alarm sending the Nest into lockdown. He didn't even notice any cameras turning to focus on him. 

Cautiously, he slowly opened the lid... to reveal Tim's Laptop Of Death And Destruction, colorfully decorated with a multitude of stickers surrounding the apple in the center. Another yellow sticky note was neatly placed in the upper right hand corner. 

_Password: HowDareY0UdoubtMyG3N1U5.fool._

He snickered. Talk about long passwords. 

Carefully lifting the Laptop Of Death And Destruction out of the box, he placed it on the coffee table and sat down on the couch. It didn't _look_ like it was about to kill him, but you never knew with something of Tim's. Especially his most precious laptop. Besides, he _had_ just been dead, so he'd probably be fine if it _did_ try to kill him.

Pressing his left thumb on top of the smiley face "sticker," he hoped that the sensor didn't expect him to have body heat. 

The sound of the laptop defenses disengaging met his ears faintly. _YES_. He _really_ didn't want to get another electric shock this hour. (Poor Damian had not enjoyed discovering that particular Laptop Defense System.) Opening the laptop, he quickly typed in the password, well aware that the whole thing would shut down should he not enter the whole thing perfectly in five seconds. Bat-paranoia was a real thing. 

Tim's background (a picture of the two of them together) shone at him for a few seconds before a screen popped up, filling the laptop.

A video call.

A video call with an exhausted looking teenage boy with floppy black hair on the other end.

_It's Tim._

He almost laughed in his relief as he collapsed back onto the couch, staring at the ceiling with tears in his eyes. _He's not dead._

**_HE'S NOT DEAD._ **

"Tim," he started before his idiot brother could say a word, "what the _ACTUAL HECK._ Do you have any idea how freaked out I was?!! Faking your death like that?? I had to hear from Babs and Dick, of all people, that you'd apparently died. Not cool, bro!!! You need to give a guy some _warning_ before you pull a stunt like that, you hear me?"

There wasn't a response. He lifted his head, the last bits of the tension he didn't realize he'd been holding in him since Babs called fading away. "Tim?"

The image of Tim on the screen didn't move. He frowned. Was it frozen? "Uh, Tim? Can you hear me?" The bars of wifi at the top of the screen said his signal was strong. Huh. "Timbers. Tim-tam. Timborie. You there?"

He wiggled the cursor over the screen. A little sideways triangle popped up over Tim's face. Jason facepalmed. That would be the play button. He had just been talking to a pre-recorded video. Nice going there, Jay. _He's not gonna let that one go. "Hey, Jay, remember that time you were so out of it that you ranted to an unplaying video?" Ha ha, hilarious._

Clicking the play button, he settled back to hear whatever it was that his adorable idiot brother had prepared for him. 

_"Hey, Jay..."_ Tim's voice wavered through the speakers. Jason frowned. The kid didn't look good at all. He actually looked really _really_ bad. 

_"I just... I'm sorry. I didn't want you to find out like this." He sniffed, swallowing hard. "I knew- I knew if I'd told you beforehand, you'd just try and stop me." His eyes didn't meet the camera. "I couldn't- I just- I'm really really sorry."_

Jason frowned, a bit of anxiety clenching in his stomach. 

_"I... I love you, Jay." His eyes met the camera now, big and blue and so, so broken._

He froze.

_"Don't ever doubt that, please. You're one of the most amazing people I've ever met and I'm just- so, **so** glad I got to have you as a brother and-" he sniffed, dragging an arm across his face to wipe away the tears. _

This wasn't happening. 

Whatever this was, it wasn't happening.

_"This isn't your fault. Please don't beat yourself up about it. If it wasn't for you, I would have probably done this a lot sooner-"_

He slammed the laptop closed. 

**_"TIM."_ **

His throat burned. He didn't care. 

_**"TIM, I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE ____ YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, BUT CUT. IT. OUT. NOW."** _

He glared at a camera, fear and anger boiling in his pulsing veins. 

A tear started to roll down his cheek. He ripped it away with his sleeve, scraping his face a bit with the force. 

_No, no, no, **no.** This wasn't happening. _

_It wasn't._

_It wasn't._

_It wasn't._

In his chest, his heart thumped around erratically. 

_Check for a ghost._

Yes. Good. That was a good idea. If this was actually what happened (which it couldn't be), here would be the best place to sense things for a ghost to tie to. Even suicide ghosts usually had one or two connections, even if it was just to whatever they'd used to kill themselves. And here he was surrounded by things that were important to Tim. 

Closing his eyes for a moment, he let out a breath, trying to shove all his panicked emotions out of the way. _This is important. Feelings can come later._

After a moment, he felt the semi misty sensation of his Senses heightening, the spirit world coming more into focus instead of just hovering in his periphery. 

He opened his eyes and looked around. 

Well, there was no ghost to speak of. And there wasn't anything tied to a random ghost anywhere here. _Let's try things important to Tim._

The first thing he noticed was the laptop in front of him. It hummed softly of Tim, but nothing out of the ordinary. He walked around the base. His skateboard sensed of him. So did the camera and stack of photos in the box on the top closet shelf. The coffee maker covered in stickers he'd dared to use - Jay smiled a bit at that. No surprise that the coffee pot would be among the objects Tim's ghost would be tied to if he was dead.

The last main object that felt like Tim's soul was the photo on the desk. Jay picked it up, looking at it. It was a picture of the two of them laughing together. An accidental photo, it had become one of their favorites. Jason had more than one copy of it framed and resting in his favorite safehouses. This picture, just like the other objects, felt faintly of Tim, but didn't have any real connection to a ghost - one formed or not. He set it back down on the desk.

Letting his Sensing fade back into the background, he frowned and paced. Nothing about this made sense. Tim was supposedly dead but he didn't know about it and there wasn't anything here that indicated he was dead. 

_Suicide ghosts do have at least one connection. A connection to the tool that killed them._

He had to go to the cave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Ky, my wonderful medical facts person. I apologize for freaking you out with questions on how it would be like for someone to wake up several hours after dying. Yes, Jason is a stupid medically impossible jerk, feel free to slap him cause it's all totally his fault :)
> 
> If anyone wants to go break their hearts over a two-shot that's serving as the inspiration for Tim's death, feel free to go check out JustThatOneGirl1815's "Broken" I didn't tag it as inspiration cause the main purpose of this fic is to run alongside Rise of Cardinal, but for these first few chapters, it's really only been Broken that I've been drawing from/basing events around. Link is below. 
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/21930622/chapters/52343176


	4. Connections

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: *looks at chapter plan for what was just going to be chapter two but has ended up being extended for four chapters instead of one* Okay, I'll go to... here. Yeah, finish what I didn't get done in chapter three.
> 
> *two hours later* 
> 
> Me: *looks at writing as I pass seven pages, the original beginning chapters length**looks at how I haven't even gotten halfway to the goal I wanted with this chapter* Hm. I'll write a bit more.
> 
> *several hours later*
> 
> Me: WELL I ALMOST DOUBLED THE PAGE COUNT AND STILL DIDN'T REACH THE HALFWAY POINT FOR THIS VERY SMALL SECTION OF MY EVER-GROWING PLAN BUT THIS IS PLENTY ENOUGH FOR A CHAPTER SO HERE YA GO.

Jason rode down the ghost-riddled streets in a tense focus. It was a case now. A mystery. If he could just. Not feel things emotionally for a bit that would be great. 

Extremely unlikely, but great. 

A group of ghosts opaque enough to be a driving hazard drifted in front of him, calling out and reaching for him with skeletal hands. Victims of a radioactive blast. They wanted revenge. 

Gritting his teeth, he drove through the group. They tried to catch onto him, but he shook the connection off. Not now. Not while this was happening. 

Another ghost swooped down from the sky with a screech, claws stretching for his head. He ducked and turned the next corner. _Get your head in the game, Jay._

Unfortunately, the less attached to the living world he was, the easier it was to interact with the dead. In his warded safe house, it wasn't a problem to let his sensing spike up or to probe for ghostly connections. But in the smog of Gotham, a city reeking of death so strongly that even the living felt it, his senses being this elevated was more a hindrance than a help.

He plowed through a crowd of spirits. Their faded souls brushed against the edges of his, fluctuating lightly. The fact he had just been dead himself a few hours ago made it a lot more challenging to navigate the city without being completely inundated with ghosts. Trying to avoid malicious ghosts _and_ cars simultaneously really felt more like an unbeatable video game level than should be at all fair. 

Ahead of him, a tunnel mouth gaped open, stretching into darkness. The shades that were following him shrieked in offense as they ran right into an invisible barrier, getting stuck on the wards Zatanna had been so kind as to cast at every Batcave entrance. He relaxed as the chaos of Gotham's ghosts faded into the background. 

Now he could take a look at the note Duke sent him. 

Putting the motorcycle half on autodrive, he pulled up the scan in his helmet. A text had also come in saying that the note wasn't originally wrinkled, so he didn't bother puzzling over the dark fold lines - instead focusing on the note's contents. 

_"Dear friends, loved ones, and those somewhere in between,_

_Goodbye."_

He frowned. Tim's regular handwriting was... chaotic, at best. A mix of the careless scribble he'd used for schoolwork and brainstorming case notes and the professional, smooth script used for WE work. Tim was also trained ambidextrous, so not only was there the casual handwriting and professional handwriting, but also the left and right-handed versions of those scripts.

You could tell a lot about what Tim was doing and how he felt by his writing. Jason had become skilled at recognizing when it was sleep-deprived handwriting, excited handwriting, bored handwriting, depressed handwriting, etc. For someone so good at externally hiding what he felt, Tim wasn't exactly the best at masking his emotions when it came to the tiny differences in his handwriting. Even when he used another handwriting to forge low-threat documents, you know, the kind where nobody was gonna be comparing exact pen strokes, his emotions still bled through a bit, along with his regular writing habits. The lowercase "n" always lifted a bit at the end, flicking off or even trailing if the word ended with an "n" and he was in a hurry. A lowercase "t" often had a line from the bottom of the vertical to the right side of the horizontal line, a habit particularly prominent in his casual left handed writing. The lowercase "y" always looped at the bottom, sometimes connecting to the next letter. There was more pressure placed at the bottom left of the cursive letter if it was professional right handed work. 

This note was... curious. It was written in his right hand, but not quite professional. There was a certain amount of formality, proven by the evenly spaced letters, all the lowercase the same height and resting on a perfect invisible line. But the tilted angle of the letter "e" and the length of the letters "l" and "f" indicated he had been relaxed while writing. The writing was perfectly centered on the line and all flowed smoothly, no pauses or breaks where he stopped writing to think. He knew exactly what he was going to say. It wasn't a quick note, scrawled out in a moment of panic or distress, the flow was too smooth. The pressure across all the letters was even - he was taking his time to write this. Probably about twenty or thirty seconds. At the end of a few letters, Jason could see a bit of flicked ink from the fancy blue ballpoint he was using, again signaling that he was relaxed. 

The ink was the same ink he knew Tim used on his work papers. A glass penholder with several nice blue pens resided on Tim's desk in his room. The same desk they found the note on. He had probably written it there. The angle of the letters indicated he'd been seated when he wrote it. 

Tim had been sitting, relaxed, and calm while writing it. He took his time. He wasn't afraid or stressed or anxious. He knew what he wanted to say.

Those were all signs of someone who wanted to commit suicide, who wasn't drugged or otherwise out of their normal thought process, who was unafraid of death and prepared for actions they were about to take. 

Tim was not that composed in the video. 

Water splashed out under his tires, spraying up against the wall as he turned. The cave was just one more turn away. Hopefully none of the bats would be there. This would be so much easier if none of them were there. 

He studied the note a moment longer, taking notice of the vague and almost too-peaceful wording, the lack of explanation or reassurances to family left behind. It was entirely different from the video. Then he was in the cave.

Bruce was there. 

_Wonderful._

He focused on that incredibly disappointing fact instead of the way his Sensing latched onto the body on the table and- 

Bruce stood, turning from the computer to face him. 

He dismounted, staring at his seat for a moment, as an entirely new concern suddenly filled his mind. He couldn't take off his helmet. Not while he looked like this. Yeah, he had his heart beating again and the majority of the pins and needles had worn off, but his cheeks and lips were still tingling and his eyes were probably still just a _bit_ too glassy and bloodshot to go unnoticed. Especially by _Batman._ And he hadn't bothered grabbing a domino mask, so his eyes would be on full display for anyone who cared to see. _Like Batman._

Basically, Batman was making everything much more complicated than it needed to be. Why couldn't anything be easy? Just once?

Swallowing, he turned around, keeping his helmet on and trying to ignore the way B's face darkened a bit more at his refusal to unmask. 

"Hey. I-" his throat tightened and voice trailed off. This was normally where he'd say something to antagonize B, throw him off his game, taunt him with how messed up his "Jay-lad" had become. But the only way to both explain why he was here and hurt Bruce at the same time would result in either reminding him that Jay had tried to kill Tim before, or that Jay himself had been dead before. 

He had a million barbed taunts ready. But they all hurt him more than they'd hurt B. And for what might have been the first time since he came back from the dead, he softened his tone.

"...I came." 

Bruce's face flashed with something like surprise for a moment, before sinking back to a painful sadness. "I see." 

Jason didn't respond, suddenly wanting nothing more than to not be here. 

He didn't want to do this.

Didn't want to turn and see the body.

Didn't want to touch the gun on the evidence table.

Didn't want to stand here as his former father-figure looked at him with that broken expression. 

Everything was uncomfortable. 

Tingles ran up his spine. He shifted his weight a bit. Bruce watched him. 

His heart beat in his chest. His breath filtered through the helmet. His hands began to shake.

They rarely shook anymore. Not since he'd become a marksman.

He shoved them in his jacket pockets. 

They kept trembling.

Bruce kept watching. He looked like he wanted to say something. Like he wanted to move or speak or cry or _something._ But he was frozen. 

So Jason _moved._

Once he'd started, the silent spell seemed to snap. Bruce shifted and watched him walk across the room. Jason arrived at the evidence table and cast his gaze across it, looking over the gathered items. 

The Red Robin suit, perfectly folded. A Wayne Enterprises pen, dark blue. A thin knife he'd never seen before with hard water stains across the surface. Tim's phone. A Superman mug. A small collection of pocket litter over at the end of the table. The note wasn't there, probably sitting with the paper evidence on a different table. 

And, right in the center, _a gun._

His hands were shaking, but he reached out for it anyway. _A heartbeat._ His fingers hovered right above the metal. _A heartbeat._

His hand closed around the grip. 

Instantly, his Senses lit on fire. The world swam around him. 

_no._

He could feel the pull on the gun, the tug of the connection to something else - _someone_ else. 

The person it had killed. 

Turning slowly around, his eyes followed the ethereal rope to... 

_the body on the table._

_Tim._

The weight in his hand felt heavy enough to drag him down to his own grave. _It had already sent one of them_ _that far._

_But where's the ghost?_

He tugged on the strings that tangled invisibly about the gun, hoping desperately that one of them would pull his little brother back into existence. Just a sense of him, a hint, _anything._

Anything to prove he wasn't gone forever. 

_Please._

There was a moment of nothing.

Then something...

A sense, a feeling...

He pursued it, tugging harder, not paying attention to where the line led. 

He could almost feel it...

_Almost...._

A wave of **wrongness** crashed into him and he slammed the gun back onto the evidence table, gasping for air. His head spun. He felt nauseous. 

Something was wrong. 

Something was very very wrong. 

And it focused entirely around the body on the table. 

When his legs felt less like they were made of gelatin, he started across the room towards the table where the corpse lay.

Bruce's voice echoed through the cave. Jason didn't really hear what he said. It probably wasn't important. 

Then he was there. Looking down at the body.

A cloth was draped over the face and Jason had never been more grateful to a piece of fabric before. He felt certain that if he'd seen it, it would have haunted his nightmares for the rest of eternity. Also he probably would have emptied the little that remained in his stomach on the floor. 

Even though the cloth helped, Jason couldn't deny the fact that this... this was a carbon copy for his little brother. Every slight curve of muscle, every way the one-size too big t-shirt he wore twisted around his twig body, even the way his ribs were slightly visible through the fabric... _He hadn't been eating well..._

He looked like he was asleep. 

Jason knew he wasn't.

His eyes drifted down to where _his_ hand lay limply, palm partially upturned, exposing a scar on the inside of his wrist. 

Jason remembered the first time he saw that scar. 

The first time he realized Tim was suicidal.

It was closed and faded now. Almost invisible against his too-pale skin. 

It healed, but ultimately was worthless. What good is a scar on a corpse? 

His Senses were on high alert, reminding him that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Slowly, he pulled his glove off, eyes never leaving the pale, familiar hand. It was waiting for him. Pulsing with the mystery of something unnatural, even for death. 

Jason's fingertips - cold and dead themselves - met the fingers of the corpse. 

Everything in his body _**revolted.**_

 _It was wrong **wrong wrongsicktwisted-**_ ****

Ripping his helmet off, he only had a moment to choke on air before he was retching. The acid burned his throat, his nose, his mouth. Everything was on fire. His senses were screaming, drowning out everything else.

He gasped for air, but only got half a breath before the bile forced its way up his throat again. He doubled over, shaking uncontrollably. 

_It's so wrong. So **so wrong.**_

Shivers racked his body. He closed his eyes and convulsed as his body forced out what was left in his stomach. 

_That's not Tim._

_That is **not** Tim. _

In his chest, his heart stuttered, upset by the sudden violence.

_Whatever the ____ that is, it is **NOT** Tim. _

There was a hand on his shoulder. It was heavy. He vaguely heard someone's voice, deep and familiar. 

He wasn't touching the body, but he could still sense the **_wrongness._** He vomited. 

After what felt like an eternity, it stopped. He almost dropped completely to the ground from exhaustion. He was too weak. His barely-alive body couldn't take this much stress.

The corpse on the table radiated something sickening and twisted. Jason felt like Superman would next to a body of Kryptonite.

Someone pulled him over to the side. He didn't have the energy to resist, collapsing limply into something broad and strong. It closed around him, but he barely felt it. 

There was something incredibly unnatural on that table. 

Jason knew there was something else, something he wasn't sensing quite right or hadn't realized yet. It was hovering around the edges of his awareness, brushing up against the edges of his soul and _painfully_ familiar. 

But he couldn't think about it. Because there was only one coherent thought in his mind. 

_That body is **not** Tim Drake. _

* * *

Bruce was concerned. 

Red Hood- no, _Jason_ had come to the cave unprompted, with no threats of violence or angry accusations. Then he stood there, helmet on, and simply said he'd "come." And stopped talking.

Bruce couldn't hear his tone quite clearly through the modulator, but despite that, it was the softest his wayward son had ever spoken to him since _before._

Jason had stared at him for a full minute in silence, barely moving. For a few terrified moments, Bruce thought he wasn't _breathing._ But then he shoved his gloved hands into his pockets abruptly. Bruce had tried not to tense in anticipation of a detonator or bomb, perhaps even a throwing knife. 

But he hadn't brought anything out. He just stood there, looking so incredibly trapped in place by a multitude of emotions that Bruce had wished Cass was there to translate what was wrong. 

Then he had burst into motion and Bruce was reminded suddenly of how Jason had moved as a kid. Frozen in place by his mind when presented with something he didn't know how to handle, then snapping into motion before something could happen that would change things. 

He had never seen Hood with that same kind of hesitation. 

Hood was always flexible and adaptable, never fazed by something unexpected. Always reacting with a snarky comment or that darkly familiar dry amusement. Jason had always had a razor sharp wit and cutting skill with words. It was a painful reminder that this was the same person he'd failed so many years ago. Or what was left of that person. 

To see him standing there, frozen and silent, was more concerning than he would have thought. The insults and carefully crafted accusations had become so normal, such a part of the game they played (but was it really a game?) that Bruce hadn't realized how unsettling it was to look at that blank red faceplate and not hear any of that venom-green vitriol spilling out. 

A knot in his chest loosened when Jason started quickly walking over to the evidence table. He watched quietly as Jason looked over the items on the table - expecting him to say something at any moment. 

Instead, he just reached out with a bit of hesitation and picked up the gun.

For a tense, horrible moment, Bruce thought he was going to use it. His mind threw the scene together. 

_Hood spun the gun in his hand, a dark laugh slipping out from behind that expressionless mask. "Well, isn't that just_ **ironic.** " _He turned to face him, the gun held loosely in his hand like it was perfectly natural to belong there, a murder weapon for a murderer. "The Batman wages a war on guns, only for his_ **precious** _l_ _ittle bird to choose it as his preferred method of death."_

_He tensed as Hood stepped away from the table, closer to him._

_"That must **burn** , huh? That your perfect little soldier chose this as the way to go out. I'm sure that was **entirely** by accident. It's not like he was a genius or anything."_

_His jaw clenched. Hood continued forwards, unbothered._

_"It's a bit of a shame. I spend all this time trying to put a bullet in the kid's head and then he just goes off-script and does it all on his own. I'm slightly offended." The gloved hand tightened smoothly around the handle. Bruce was suddenly very aware of how unprotected he was, standing there in a simple shirt and slacks, falsely assuming he was safe in his own home. Tim hadn't been safe here._

_"I am curious though, do you want to die by the same weapon your third little bird died by?" Bruce could envision the bitter grin stretching across his face as the dark taunting grew more twisted._

_"Or should I go get a crowbar?"_

_He didn't bother trying to defend himself as the gun rose and leveled itself at his head. After killing two of his sons, he wasn't going to try any harder to avoid death. He deserved it at this point. It was only fair that the first person he failed would be the one to deliver justice for his failure of the second._

_His only regrets were the pain the others would feel..._

_...and not getting to tell Jason he loved him._

~~_Bang._ ~~

Hood didn't move. 

He just held the gun, staring at it. Then he turned slowly around and looked at the body on the table. 

Bruce didn't know what to do. 

Suddenly, Jason crumpled, falling hard onto the evidence table. The gun skittered across the surface. There was a cracking clatter as a marble that had been in one of Tim's pockets rolled off the table and hit the floor. 

"Hood?"

Jason didn't answer. The table seemed to be the only thing holding him up. His legs were shaking and Bruce thought for a moment that he was going to get sick. 

"Jason?"

He could see his shoulders heaving with deep breaths. Jason wasn't reacting. Why wasn't he reacting. What was happening?

Jason suddenly forced his legs underneath him and stumbled across the room like he had serious blood loss. 

_Did he have serious blood loss? Was he injured? Was that why he was here? He's acting_ _weird because he's dying. He's dying right in front of me. Again._

He raced across the room, just in time to stabilize his son before he fell. Jason didn't react, didn't even seem to notice Bruce's presence. If he had, he would have pulled away or snapped at him or tensed or _something._

His heart was in his throat. He stared at the shiny red helmet, wishing desperately that he could see underneath it or could somehow remove it without it turning into a bomb and blowing his son's head up. _Why did his second son need to be so dramatic with everything? Couldn't he see that he was playing a cocky game of chance with his life? _

Jason kept walking across the room, supported by Bruce, until he was at the table where Tim's body lay. 

"Jay-lad?"

He didn't react, as far as he could see. _Thanks, helmet._

Jason remained perfectly still for a long moment, before slowly tilting his head as he looked at the dead boy. _Dead. Dead and gone. Lifeless. Limp. Like Jason. Like Damian. And it was all Bruce's fault this time._

Bruce watched as Jason tugged his glove off - and his eyes widened at how pale his son's skin was. Deathly pale. Jason reached for Tim's hand, pale skin flashing in the bright light and for a moment, it almost looked skeletal. 

Their fingers touched.

And Jason _convulsed._

Batman's reflexes kicked in and he grabbed the waste basket from under the examination table just in time to catch the vomit that came rushing out of Jason's mouth. 

The helmet clattered to the ground, echoing in the cave. 

Bruce couldn't tear his eyes from his son's face. 

He looked _awful._

You could argue that it was only because he was busy getting sick, but it was something more. Something churned in _his_ stomach at the sight of those too-pale lips, the cheeks barely flushed with the slightest hint of color that Bruce could only see if he stared.

He looked like a ghost.

He looked dead.

Like he had been once before, like how Tim was now. 

And it felt like a stab in his heart.

Jason was going to die again. 

Right here.

In the cave. 

And Bruce didn't even know what was going on. 

Jason was shaking, quivering on his hands and knees, gasping for air between retches. 

He wanted to help - _needed_ to help. 

It felt useless, pointless, and terribly familiar, but he rested his hand on his son's shoulder. Just like he used to on nights when Jason had food poisoning or the flu, on nights when they were two parts of a whole, those nights when they were a father and son. 

He missed those nights.

Jason stopped emptying his stomach - _he hadn't eaten recently -_ and almost crumpled onto the floor. Bruce was sinking down to his knees before he realized what he was doing, and guided Jason over onto him.

His son didn't resist the motion, additionally proving just how out of it he was at the moment. His head lolled loosely against Bruce's chest and he sucked in a tight breath. _Jason was laying on him. His prodigal son's head was pressed against his heart._

Jason didn't move as Bruce put his arms around him, holding him. His chest rose and fell. _He's alive. He's still alive. You haven't ruined it all yet._

_Not yet._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... Good Dad!Bruce just kinda... happened. I have no idea. He was just suddenly there like ONE OF MY SONS JUST DIED I NEED TO KEEP THE OTHERS SAFE AND CLOSE. 
> 
> This isn't to say that he will remain being a good dad. I have no idea if he will or not, but he's not exactly a shining example of consistent dad-ing and he's very emotional right now. And he clearly still has very conflicted feelings on Jason, both vividly imagining Jason killing him and then caring for him when he gets sick, like Jason won't hurt him and they're partners again.
> 
> And I know Tim's probably right handed, cause most people are and comic artists aren't gonna give a second thought to what hand he writes with unless he's canonically left-handed. But I have just now decided to headcanon that Tim is naturally left-handed, but trained himself to be ambidextrous at a young age. For all of you that don't know, left-handed people can be easily identified by their handwriting due to english moving in the opposite direction of what feels natural, so there are little cop-outs and quirks that tend to show up for lefties. Which is not helpful as a vigilante and especially unhelpful when trying to mimic a right-hander's writing. 
> 
> Okay, yeah, also I'm left-handed and trained ambidextrous and I have so many different handwritings it's crazy. So Tim's handwriting is entirely based off of mine. (And if any of you have any interest in a rant on writing styles and handwriting and how to write an appropriately annoyed-by-the-world left handed character lemme know)


	5. Contradictions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He had been trying not to think about how pale he was. How ghostly white his skin had become. How it looked almost transparent under the bright overhead lights.
> 
> But Bruce had never been good at knowing when things weren't okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to the surprise of absolutely no-one, jason went off script (those theater kids with their impromptu bits, amiright?) and ya'll get more than I planned for
> 
> makes you question why I'm planning at all, but ya know. details are unimportant.

Bruce stared at the face of his estranged son. He hadn't had the chance to be this close to him since he came back from the dead - hadn't been _given_ the chance. 

He was so _old._

And so, so _young._

 _And,_ a part of his mind pointed out, _he looks just as dead as he did the last time you held him this close._

No. No, he didn't. He wasn't. He was _alive_ and _breathing_ and uncomfortably pale- but that's not important, as long as he's alive, Bruce didn't _care-_

_"Do you even care?"_

_"I knew it. All this time, acting like you cared-"_

_"-I was young and dumb enough to think you cared-"_

His breath hitched, throat tightening uncomfortably. No. No, Jason had to know he cared. He _had_ to. Those were just words, sharpened into weapons, aimed at his most vulnerable parts. Aimed at his heart. 

_"If you'd cared, then **why is he still alive?!**" _

Bruce looked down at Jason again, swallowing hard. Jason's breathing- _breathing. He was breathing-_ was shallow and just on this side of too fast. His eyes were closed and for a heartbeat, Bruce was reminded of when a much younger boy would sometimes get sick after patrol...

~

_Bruce had seen the look on Jason's face after they'd busted that drug dealer. It was twisted up in a way that meant he was angry, but more than just that. It meant he was hurting- no, grieving._

_That anger was a familiar mask. Bruce wore a mask of stoicism and fear, fashioned into a darkly shadowed cowl. Jason wore a mask of anger and... protectiveness. Somehow, the friendly domino shape he had come to associate with Dick's happy smiles and fierce frowns looked... wrong on Jason's face. Like he was trying to fill the role of someone he, at his core, couldn't be._

_Bruce shook off the odd train of thought. That was unimportant. Jason was a good Robin and cared for the people they saved in a more... tangible way than Bruce quite felt he or Dick ever could. They hadn't experienced what Jason had. They had seen what he had seen, but only the aftermath, only once the drug bust was over or the crime scene had been catalogued._

_Clearly, Jason saw things in an entirely different way from Bruce and Dick. Though, Bruce mused as he made his way to the bathroom Jason was hiding in, perhaps not all that different from himself. He'd had the same reaction towards guns when he was Jason's age. It wasn't all that much of a shock to see him react so violently towards drugs. Or that dealer._

_Arriving at the door, he knocked softly. "Jay-lad?" There was no response. "Can I come in?"_

_There was a quiet groan and Bruce took it as a yes. Creaking the door open, he saw Jason - he was so small - curled up on the floor next to the toilet. The acrid smell of vomit lingered in the air and Jason's shoulders heaved with every breath._

_Bruce walked across the small room and took a plastic cup from the cupboard. After raising Dick, he'd learned that it was wise to have a clean cup in each bathroom for when someone was feeling sick. It was inconvenient (and very stressful) to run all the way to the kitchen whenever someone was throwing up._

_Filling the cup half up with water, he set it down next to his son with a click that rang louder in the small room than he'd expected. Jason raised his head a bit at the noise, ocean blue eyes fluttering open. Bruce eased himself down onto the floor next to him, watching quietly as he pushed himself onto his elbows and grabbed the cup._

_He set it back down when he'd finished, letting out a raspy sigh that threatened to turn into a sob. Bruce gently guided him over to lean on him instead of going back down on the bathroom floor. Jason didn't fight it, just curling up onto him, trying half-heartedly to hide the shudders wracking his small body._

_It was several minutes before Jason spoke._

_"He was her favorite dealer."_

_Bruce pulled him a little closer._

_"He- he would always give them to her. 'N she knew she could always get them there." There was a small noise. Bruce decided to pretend it was a cough._

_"I'm sorry, chum."_

_Jason sniffed, pressing his face against his chest, muffling the next words that came out. But Bruce still heard him clearly._

_"He's the one who gave her the last dose."_

_Bruce's arms tightened protectively around his son._

_That night he'd paid a visit to the GCPD, delivering enough evidence to put a certain drug dealer away forever._

_~_

The Robin case was staring at him. He tore his gaze away from the tattered suit, the empty domino mask, the ghostly way they hung there, an eternal reminder to his failure.

_But was he your only failure?_

Bruce shoved that thought away. No. He wouldn't allow another son of his to die. They had gotten Jason back - albeit through unknown means, they had gotten Dick back (even if he hadn't even been gone more than a minute, two hearts had stopped in that minute), they had gotten Damian back through hard work, and Bruce was _not_ willing to let death keep _another_ son. 

Jason's face twitched, pulling into a faint expression between disgust and revulsion. The next exhale was more of a shudder and he seemed to press a bit more into Bruce - or further from the body on the table. Bruce couldn't tell. It still made him freeze in shock.

_It had been so long..._

His eyes tracked across Jason's features - and all the scars littered liberally across them. Scars he hadn't noticed until now. He frowned at how many of them spoke of countless sharp objects that had made contact with the tender skin around his eyes. It was a miracle none of them had blinded him. 

_In fact..._ he frowned, looking closely at an old scar - at least three or four years old - that ran vertical across the thin skin of his left eyelid. It wasn't thick, but certainly wasn't a minor injury. Especially since... did... did it go all the way through his eyelid?

Something in his stomach clenched as he realized, _yes. It did._

And with the smoothness of the cut, the way it was so even and straight, Bruce could only deduce it to be one thing.

A knife.

A knife had been thrown at his son's eye.

A knife had been thrown at his son's eye hard enough that it split his eyelid and _blinded him._

It was a miracle that he was alive at all - the blade must have been too short, gone in at the wrong angle, somehow managed not to hit something irreparable. _Like his brain._

But he was _blind._

Bruce had never seen Jason without at least a domino mask on.

Logically, he knew Jason had endured extreme and intensive training with many people who were not afraid to hurt their students in the name of improvement. He knew Jason had trained with Talia and the League of Assassins, Lady Shiva and her elite League of Shadows, and, according to Talia, the All-Caste. (Though that could have been a lie designed to mock him. Talia knew how hard he'd tried to gain acceptance to the All-Caste and he had not reacted well to being denied.) But aside from those three, he realized he didn't know _who_ his son had learned from. 

He would need to research this.

Knowing who had blinded his son was important. For _reasons._

His watch buzzed lightly - _bzzzzt bzz bzz - Damian -_ and he lifted it to check the message. 

_[Father. My contact has confirmed that our operation will be s_ _uccessful, should we depart within the next hour. After that window has passed, it is suspected that Grandfather will have begun the return journey. He does not linger long in Nanda Parbat. The Batjet is fast enough to transport us there on time, with ten minutes of buffer to our original timetable.]_

Jason shifted the smallest bit, apparently disturbed by the movement. There was a pause. Then he froze, eyes flinching minutely and his breath hitching the smallest bit. 

In a moment, he had gone from exhaustion to apprehension. Bruce knew he'd been discovered, not that he had been trying to hide it.

For a few heartbeats, Jason didn't move. Trapped in place like he had been before. But now that Bruce could see his face he realized... _Jason was scared._

Bruce hated it.

He had never wanted his son to be scared of him.

A traitorous thought tried to speak, but he locked it down tightly. Jason was starting to sit up, to pull away. He took his arms away, even though he wanted nothing more than to hug him, hold him close, hear the life in his heartbeat, in his chest. 

But his boy was leaving him alone and empty and cold-

_Wait, cold?_

Jason had sat up by now, back to Bruce, hiding his face. 

There was something off. 

Bruce... didn't feel his warmth leave. He always did. Always had a pang in his chest when his kid would pull away and he didn't know the right words to get them to come back. But with Jason... he felt something cold leave. Not the warmth he had expected.

It was only a moment before he realized the problem. Jason was still in his body armor, even if Bruce wasn't. That was all. 

"Jason-" he cut off at the way his shoulders tensed, like an animal who knew there was a predator at its back. He softened his tone, trying to force the darkness out. " _Jason..._ Are you... well?"

He had been trying not to think about how pale he was. How ghostly white his skin had become. How it looked almost transparent under the bright overhead lights. 

His son swallowed. He was hesitating. This normally would have confirmed something for Bruce, but this was _Jason._ He didn't have the advantage ~~_the_ _privilege_~~ of knowing his tells anymore.

Somehow that hurt worse than most of the stray thoughts that had crossed his mind in the last ten minutes.

"Yeah. Yeah, Bruce. I'm fine." 

He sounded exhausted. _Probably because he just threw up everything in his stomach._

"If..." He was taking a chance here, Jason was so fragile, their tentative alliance so easy to snap with just one wrong word. He steeled himself. "If you need a place-"

" _No."_

Bruce deflated, even though he knew it was a foolish hope. That even though he had lost one son (for now) maybe he would regain another. 

"Alright. ...If you're up for eating anything, I'm sure Al-"

"I'm _fine,_ B." He ran a hand through his hair. Bruce saw a flash of white appear and disappear as the streak in his son's hair mixed with the black for a brief moment. "...I'm fine."

He swallowed. "You look... tired."

Jason scoffed, muttering something lowly under his breath that Bruce didn't quite catch. "Yeah. Tends to happen when you've got PTSD from being murdered." 

He grunted softly, the memories that sprung up pushing him more into Batman, who didn't deal with things like painful memories and the _emotions_ they brought. Besides, there was no real way to respond to that statement that wouldn't be either a lie or inflame Jason more. So he asked a question that had been lingering in his mind ever since he'd begun vomiting.

"You had a strong reaction to making contact with the body." _Tim's body. The body of the boy who he'd tried to kill so many times. The body of the boy who had died, but not at his hand._

Jason tensed more, apparently sensing the shift as well. Bruce tried to fight for the next words to come out as less... intimidating? Hostile? Interrogatory?

"Is something wrong?"

"No." Jason snapped. His back was still turned to him, hiding his expression. "There's nothing-" his voice caught, cracked on the last syllable. Batman wanted to push for more answers. Bruce wanted to hold him again. 

"It's..." he sighed, tension seeping out of his shoulders, like he had a burden he was finally laying to rest. "It's just... being around death... this close. To... well, ...you've probably noticed that _Red Hood_ isn't often active in late April." His tone was softer than anything Bruce had heard from him in _years._

"It's not- I'm not- it's just- just _flashbacks_."

Bruce was trying to figure out how to best respond to that when his wrist buzzed again. One long, two short. 

_[Father. If we are departing, we must_ _prepare now. Shall I tell Pennyworth of our operation?]_

He stood, looked at the boy on the table, then at the one on the floor. As much as he wanted to stay, to ask Jason a million questions, to try and rebuild the bridges that had been burned, there were more important things at stake. 

He could always talk to Jason later.

Jason was alive.

Jason didn't need rescue. 

Jason would be fine on his own while Bruce worked to get his brother back.

He typed a quick message to Damian.

[I will inform him. We will speak upstairs.]

He had only taken a few steps when he wondered if he should tell Jason what they were doing. He had the most experience of them all, and was the second most familiar with the history behind it. He could be a great asset.

But then he remembered how he had been unwilling to help bring Damian back. It was unlikely that he would do more than scoff at the idea of bringing back his "Replacement," maybe throw a bitter insult, and possibly endanger the secrecy of their mission.

Batman walked away. 

* * *

Jason didn't know how long it was before the fog had cleared enough to think. Bruce had left at some point, he wasn't exactly sure when. Distantly, he knew they had talked and that he'd lied through his teeth the entire time. What it was they talked about was... probably unimportant. 

Point was, Bruce was gone and that meant Jason was alone with the _thing._

Which meant that there were no bats around to stick their noses into what he was doing. 

Which _meant_ he had to get off the floor, ignore the churning nausea, and get busy.

It was just a mystery. 

Just another freaky corpse with weird things going on. 

It's not- 

His Senses refocused from the blur they were in and he almost bent over the trash can - huh, when did that get there? - again as a new feeling hit him. 

A feeling that was horribly, awfully familiar.

_Tim._

But no. It wasn't. It wasn't it wasn't itwasntitwasnt _itwaswrongwrongwrong **eviltwistedfake**_ -

It felt like Tim.

It felt like the furthest thing from Tim.

It had a sense of him about it - stronger than anything else there was in the Nest.

It was _violently_ not anything even _close to Tim._

He stared, heart beating in his chest louder and louder. It swam in his ears, drowning out everything else. 

_What **is** this thing? _

He stood, moving towards it almost in a daze. His body didn't feel like it was his. The _wrongness_ pulsed and broke through him, like he was fading from the world, slipping deeper into the land of the dead...

The body was below him, cradled in a web of phantasmic strings that held it to the living world. One of them he recognized as the tie to the gun - the murder weapon. There were other threads, twisting and turning away, sprawling out through time and space. Some of them tugged and pulled lightly as the physical objects moved. This web was fainter than most, ghostly and faded already, despite the recent death.

It isn't magical - he can tell that in an instant. His hands tingle and thrum as he pulls the All-Blades into existence, his soul blazing and flickering at his fingertips. 

The swords seem to drift through the body of their own accord, detached in a way from any conscious movement on his part. They pass through harmlessly, the threads don't sever or fray - confirming the lack of magic involved, dark _or_ light. He doesn't feel any resistance of a lingering soul. _It's empty._

Curious. 

The All-Blades flow back into him like a fiery breath of life. It's easier to think now - to move intentionally. 

Looking closer, he studies the corpse, invisibly pulling back layers of mystery. Slowly, things start to settle into place, the scene coming more into focus - a picture now, less of a dream. The thin threads he hadn't seen before now appear in all their complexity. Tangled, like the twisting paths of neurons, they spread out through the darkness. 

Strands of blue gray spill out from the gaping hole in the skull, exploding outward like a cloud of volcanic ash - frozen permanently in time. _So it was suicide..._ One thick plume narrows into a band that stretches off to his left. It would probably lead to the gun. 

Around the pale hands cluster swirling masses of fading teal, some curls stretching up around the arms and fastening in the chest. From there they join other shades in traveling up to the brain, like a haunted nervous system. There were no sickly shades of black intertwined with that teal. _This was intentional, not driven by threats or fear._

The body seems to be just that - a body that once housed intention and thought and has now passed into the decay of death. Not a genetically grown body double, one that never lived. If that had been true, there would be no strings.

The web twangs as something physical moves, sending ripples through the structure and drawing his attention away from the finer netting, breaking his logic-only focus. 

The _feelings_ slam into him again. 

It's _wrong, so so **wrong,**_ his senses scream.

It's _Tim,_ his heart whispers.

He doesn't know. He _doesn't know._ _He_ _doesn'tknowhedoesn'tknowhedoesn'tknoww_ _hy_ _whywhywhy-_

Taking a deep breath, he tried to rein the emotions in. _Think logically. This is just a mystery. Just solve the mystery._

Staring into the empty abyss - away from the thing, the body, the perfect image of his little brother - helped calm his roiling thoughts. He was about to turn back to the interweaving threads of color when he saw it. A glimmer of something white-gray, the reflected edge of spider's silk flashing in the darkness. An invisible web. It's cocooning the body, the colored threads, the-

_A flash of red._

His eyes widen and he snaps his head towards it. 

It vanishes. 

He narrows his eyes and reaches out for it, feeling something flighty and fleeting slip at the edge of his awareness.

It's out of reach, too far, _too far-_

He stretches further, straining desperately outward. Past the darkness, past the cave, past something even further-

It's the solution, the key to this mess. He knows it, he can _feel it._ The _answer._

_It's the answer._

He can feel himself fading quickly. He can't go much further - not while he's tied to the living world. 

It's almost gone. 

He surges forwards with a tingling shudder, grasping frantically for the fleeting flash, the answer, the _truth-_

**"Hood?"**

_no._

He _slams_ back into his body. The world spins around him, blurring lights and shadows, shapes too faint to make out. Everything is frigid. His skin prickles and burns. Pain lances through his spine, lodging firmly in his skull.

For a moment, it's like he's died again. 

"Jason?"

Snapping his head up at the offending noise, he tries not to pass out. 

Duke is looking at him in what looks like disturbed concern. 

He can't speak.

"Hey man... you doing okay? You look a bit... _pale."_

That's not what he was trying to say. He's too unnerved. Too uncomfortable. He's got the look people have when something is unsettling in a way they can't really understand. The look they have when they think they're seeing things.

He glanced down at his hand, the one he'd removed the glove from. 

Skeletal bones shone white under a semi-transparent layer of skin. As he watched, they faded and his dead-pale hand solidified again. 

_Well isn't that just fantastic._ _First you lose the only clue you had and then you get caught mid-phase. By a bat, no less._

Clearing his throat, he tucked his hand into his jacket pocket. He was suddenly very aware of the fact he wasn't wearing a domino mask and his helmet was still on the ground. 

_Fan-freaking-tastic._

"Yeah." Wow, his voice sounded _bad._ "I'm fine." 

Hopefully Duke would just chalk it up to grief or something. 

"Oh... okay."

He looked up to see Duke looking at the body. He wouldn't see all the threads, all the hidden mystery, all the tell-tale signs of what truly stopped that beating heart. 

Duke's own heartbeat seemed to echo in his ears, his life pulsing through Jason's undead body. He was so _alive._ So different from everyone else in the cave. And he didn't even realize.

Jason knew at this moment that he would never be able to delve that deeply into the realm of death again. Not while this body was here in the cave. Not while the _living_ were watching and milling about. 

_If he had gone a bit further... If it had been anyone but Duke to see..._

Duke was truly the best choice out of all of them to walk in on that. He was still getting used to hero work, from what he could tell. He wasn't quite sure what was and wasn't abnormal, and because of that, might not mention it to Bruce. Hopefully. That was a conversation Jason _never_ wanted to have.

"You... sure you're doing okay?" 

Their eyes met. Jason internally winced at Duke's flinch when his dark eyes met Jason's glassy green-blue. After how deep he'd just plunged, he'd be lucky if they looked anything closely resembling clear in the next two days. 

"Your..." Duke swallowed, clearly concerned about asking this. "Your, uh, eyes..."

Jason decided to help him out. 

"Look weird, yes. I know. Not all of us have the privilege of a clean resurrection."

That came out the entirely wrong way. Now he just looked more embarrassed and awkward. Good job, Jay. What a great impression you're making on the new kid. 

"Uh, sorry, man. I didn't mean to-"

He brushed him off. "Don't worry about it, kid. It's fine."

Duke's expression immediately morphed from embarrassed awkwardness to a quite impressive deadpan. "You're _maybe_ a year older than me. Tops. I might be new to this whole vigilante thing, but I'm not in middle school." 

He snorted. "Last I checked, you're allowed to call anyone younger than you 'kid.' So a year? That's plenty of olderness to warrant kid-calling."

"Where's that place you're checking? Cause I feel pretty sure that an opinion isn't the same as a fact and can't really be used to justify a case."

He smirked. "The Book of Older Sibling Rights, obviously."

Duke raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "Uh- _huh._ _Right._ Cause that _totally_ is a thing that exists."

"Oh it does," he nodded sagely, "just ask Alfred. He's got a copy upstairs."

Duke clearly was torn between calling him out on his bluff and believing they were actually crazy enough to own a book like that. (They were.) 

"I guess I'll check that out then." 

He hummed. "Just don't let Damian find it. I'm not convinced he's above book burning."

Duke cracked a smile. "I'll make sure to keep it properly hidden."

"Good."

There was a short period of silence, the humor dying down into something more solemn. Something more appropriate for the body on the table. 

_A Replacement,_ he mused in amusement. _Look at that. The Replacement got himself his own replacement. The Pretender got a pretender. Isn't that ironic._

And said replacement was just as dead and gone as Jason had wanted so long ago.

His throat tightened a bit. 

It didn't make sense. Nothing about this made any more sense than when he'd first entered the cave. 

The body, the computer, the note-

The note.

"Hey," he offered the other vigilante a small smile, "thanks for sending me that note." 

Duke nodded once. "If you'd like to see the original, it's over here."

He followed, grabbing his helmet off the floor on the way. "You said it wasn't crinkled before?"

"Yeah," Duke opened a file, sliding out a slip of paper covered in crease lines. "After Bruce found it on the desk he, uh, crushed it." He held the paper out.

For a second, Jason was almost afraid to take it. His senses were so heightened at this point that he didn't even need to touch it to know it was important. To know it played a part in all of this. 

But he took it anyway. And the rest of the world instantly buzzed into static. 

This was a legitimate suicide note.

Written unequivocally by Tim.

And linked directly to the body on the table. 

But the body on the table isn't Tim.

Tim wrote this. Jason knew it as surely as he did his name. It felt too much of his soul to be anyone else. Not even a magical clone could have made this. It was _Tim's suicide note._

But Tim isn't dead.

He isn't dead and there's a replacement on the table.

The replacement wrote the note.

Tim wrote the note.

Tim isn't the replacement.

Tim is alive.

The replacement is dead.

Jason wanted to scream. 

_It's too much._

_It's all too much._

Duke's voice floated from somewhere to his left. "...hasn't been taking it too well... ...she's been staying here... ...and he says he's fine..." The words came and went. Jason hated it. Everything was confusing. Everything contradicted everything else. Even the words Duke spoke were in flux. 

He just wanted his brother back.

Was that too much to ask?

_Was it?_

"...and Bruce isn't listening..."

Bruce.

_Batman._

The static cleared and he was suddenly, painfully aware of where he was. 

He was in the Batcave.

It was like everything had been muffled ever since he walked in. 

He was in the Batcave and his skin was _crawling_ with apprehension. There was an attack coming. He knew it. There was something in the air, something in the shadows, watching him. Waiting for the perfect moment to strike. 

Duke's voice cut off in shock when Jason shoved the note back into his hands. It was too much. This place was a trap. A cage. A coffin. And he was buried and drowning. 

"...ou okay, man?"

He froze. He was halfway across the room. His bike was waiting for him at the door. He could feel Signal's eyes on the back of his neck. 

_He wanted to scream._

_Nobody hears you scream in your coffin._

"Yeah. I just... need some time alone." He tried to inject a bit more feeling into his monotone. "You know, death day and all that. Flashbacks still acting up a bit." _Lies._

He didn't hear Duke's response, too busy trying not to run for his bike like a kid running from the monster in the dark. He remained calm and slow, combat boots hitting the ground in even, measured steps. Left. Right. Left. Right. 

The motorcycle was too far. The doors to the cave opened. He wouldn't run, he wouldn't run, he wouldn't run- 

Damian's young voice echoed through the cave, "Which plane are we taking, Father?"

He ran. 

"...an't make it there..."

"..we be checking first?"

There were other voices behind him, mixing together. His heart was hammering in his chest, hands shaking as he tried to pull the helmet on correctly. 

"..et the body an..."

The world was swimming, he felt weak and panicked. _They were going to find him. They were here and they could trap him. Restrain him. Send him to a cell with torturous laughter and bright green. Send him to his coffin. Bury him alive underground. Close the exits. Trappedtrappedtrapped._

"..ure this is th..."

He kicked the kickstand up. 

"...tive of his Lazarus Pits..."

He froze.

_What._

_**No.** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:)

**Author's Note:**

> When will I write more? No one knows. Leaving a comment, however, does more to encourage me to write than any kudos or views or subscriptions. Even if it's a small comment. I can assure you that even the tiniest comments brighten my day considerably and help propel me past a writer's block.
> 
> Thank you to all who give comments. You are 98% of what keeps me writing and updating on here.
> 
> Many thanks to OneGirl for letting me write this! I hope you enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed RoC!


End file.
